The Jazz Butcher Vaulting Synapses

The Jazz Butcher, pop musician, pop psychologist and
poultry aficionado, has no idea why he's, as they say in the
biz, "big in Canada." He does have a few typically outre
guesses, though.

"It may be some weird atavistic colonial thing," muses the
Butcher, better know to his fellow townsfolk as Pat Fish.
"Perhaps they think there's a spirit of the old country going
on. It's a totally mad place, though. You go up there and
they're speaking French and spending dollars that have a
picture of the Queen of England on them!"

Ever since the release of his first record, Bath Of Bacon, in 1982,
Pat's been frequently shunted off into the corner where
Britain keeps its charming rustic eccentrics. The trouble is,
aside from the odd ode to the might capon (like 1986's
The Best Way or slyly subversive mini- biographies (like Southern Mark Smith
that image is not at all that accurate. His albums range from
the introspective acoustic murmurs of Distressed Gentlefolk to the
comparatively balls-out rock of his work with the
Sikkorskis From Hell. On more recent releases, including
this year's Cult Of The Basement, he's even managed to get these diverse
stylings to coalesce into a reality-grounded dreamscape -
the kind of thing you don't have to like college radio to
enjoy.

"We've never seen ourselves as an indie band," Pat insists.
"But I suppose not many people write songs about goldfish
and shit like that. Actually, I've never written songs about
goldfish either - I've written songs about people who've
said I had to write songs about goldfish. Or is that a bit too
post-structuralist?"

Well, yes. As you may have guessed by Pat's
synapse-vaulting trains of thought, The Jazz Butcher's
evolution has really been more of a convolution. Over the
years, scores of folks have drifted in and out of the various
permutations that have backed Pat on disc and live. The
most successful of those was his several-LP association
with the shadowy Max Eider, himself a rustic eccentric of the
first order. Perhaps the oddest, though, was when ex-Bauhaus
bassist David J. signed on.

"In a way, he's one of the least odd," Pat demurs. "We've
known each other locally for years, and we have quite a lot
in common. It must have looked very strange to see one of
the Undead playing on this thing they keep trying to tell you
is a comedy record - which of course it isn't."

Cult Of The Basement might
be the darkest Jazz Butcher record yet, in spite of its
smattering of "gibbon's-eye view humour," to use his
phrase. But considering the circumstances surrounding its
creation, that shouldn't be too surprising.

"We'd just had a
guitar player taken from under our feet with brain
tumours," Pat recalls. "Everyone was really freaking out -
one minute it was like total doom and gloom and the next
frantic, over the top dancing.

"It also has something to do with the fact that it was made
entirely at night in the middle of winter, while we were
listening to Big Star's 3rd album - a record that was so commercial it
wasn't even released! And people ask me about success!"

That's a subject he doesn't mind addressing. He's fully
aware that his fall/winter tour of the U.S. won't be counted
among 1990's top moneymaking juggernauts. He even jokes
that his prolific output is the result of a "complete lack of
quality control," though his dedicated devotees might
disagree. There's only one question that he's yet to sort out
- is The Jazz Butcher a group? He thinks long and hard.